ROSEMARY MAC CABE

As International Women’s Day draws to a close – with no small number of defectors – we reach what one of my Twitter “friends” terms his “favourite day”: Steak and Blow Job Day.

This day has, says the website, “been created so you ladies finally have a day to show your man how much you mean to him”. Because we women get Valentine’s Day (and I don’t recall anyone spending it cooking me dinner and going down on me, but I do have a short memory span), men get this – complete with advertisements for such wonder products as Semenex and Sunny’s Guide to Sucking Cock.

While I don’t have any particular problems with either steak or blow jobs, the idea that someone thinks that these two things together constitute the love of a woman for her man fills me with a faint cold fear that closely resembles disgust. Couple that (obvious pun) with the fact that I’m sure there are thousands of women, worldwide, who think that cooking steak and giving a blow job is just, like, totally empowering – because it’s a choice, y’see! – and my rage factor goes into overdrive.

So, in short summary, and because I could go on for hours about this but feel that everything should all be a bit too preschool – who in the world thinks this is a good idea? – I will say this: I am free on Sunday. I have nothing to do. If you’d like me to come over, cook you a steak and give you a blow job, you just let me know in the comments, and I will gladly come over and kick the shit out of you.

* Sorry, Mum and Dad – I know sometimes you’re sorry you read my blog, and this might be one of these times, but if I’m going to pick a side of the fence for this particular topic, you should be glad I chose this one.

Sometimes you see images, or read stories, that make you realise how insignificant you are, in the grand scheme of things. These moments usually come as some sort of relief and, in my case, usually come at exactly the right moment.

From NASA’s Flickr photostream, the most detailed true-colour image, to date, of planet Earth. Mindblowing.

# 1 – on the 15A

I get on, a little bleary-eyed, unsure of the fare. You’d swear I’d never got the bus before. A young woman gets on before me; she is Asian, with a headscarf, a long dress, a backpack. An older gentleman gets up out of his seat and gestures for her to sit down.

“Welcome to our country!” he shouts, small gobs of spit flying everywhere. I brace myself for what will come next. “It’s very expensive!” He’s kind of shouting; the entire bus has gone silent, that awkward silence of Irish people, who will chat the head off the local butcher but can’t bear to be spoken to on public transport, and I can’t help myself: I burst out laughing.

“I don’t know what you’re laughing at!” he says, and the young woman looks slightly relieved to have his attention distracted. Glad to be of service, ma’am. “It is expensive! It’s a fuckin’ recession, and everything’s just getting dearer!”

I’m still laughing, grasping at the handrail, attempting to move upstairs. Suddenly, his tone changes, gets serious, slightly curious.

“Are you going to the early house?” I laugh again, shake my head. “Well, I AM!!”

# 2 – at the petrol station

There are some instances in life that serve only to remind us how much we are creatures of habit and, in my case, how tiny my brain is that I can’t remember having been in the same place three times in one week. The petrol station is one of those soulless places; you don’t remember it because you don’t have to. It just is, and it serves one function: to sell you petrol. You move on, quickly, and without looking back.

I go in to pay (€30 for a fill; my car, it is a cheap one), and the Indian man behind the counter smiles toothily at me.

“You haven’t got new car,” he says, gleefully. I am momentarily stunned: firstly, that he is talking to me, and secondly, because no, I haven’t got a new car, and have no idea what he’s getting at. I furrow my brow (no botox here). “You haven’t got new car!!” he repeats it, slightly louder and with more emphasis on the word “car”.

“Um, no, I haven’t,” I confirm, looking around, as one tends to do in the Big Brother age, for the hidden camera.

“Your car, is very small for you!” he chirps. I swear, he is chirping. “Is VERY small.” I am slightly offended – my car isn’t that small. It’s no Imp, for crying out loud, and besides which, I, surely, am not that big. I don’t need an extra seat on the airplane, like, so why would I be too big for my car (which is the insinuation, surely, if my car is too small for me). I hesitate. A little laugh, a nervous laugh, escapes.

“You should get BMW!” he chirps again. I am, honestly, baffled. Firstly, how does he know how long I’ve had my car? I can’t remember the last time I was in this garage, although it’s on my way home, so it’s very possible I go in weekly. But a BMW?! Do I look like the type of person to want a BMW?

“A ha,” I say (nothing if not succinct). “Maybe next year.” He looks, to put it mildly, delighted.

“Yes! Next year! New car!!” And off I go, backing out of the station, saying goodbye, smiling. He waves at me the whole way to my car.

# 3 – outside my new house

It’s my first night in my new house (life is heaven in Dublin seven, y’know) and I’m going out to see who I think is Pat Shortt, but who turns out to be Jon Kenny (good, if a little country-focused). I call a cab; they say they’ll be there in five minutes, and I decide that this is the perfect length of time to get my coat on, turn off the lights, lock the doors and have a cigarette outside, while I wait. The best laid plans are always the worst.

“What’s your name?” One should always be wary of conversations that start like this; while you can take comfort that, in all likelihood, you’re not going to be mugged, you’re on a slippery slope towards a “chat”, and we all know where that goes.

“Rosemary,” I reply, and later, when someone asked why I told him my real name, it just seemed silly; he might as well call me Rosemary, as call me Síle or some other name that’s not my own.

“Can I have a cigarette?” At this point, I should not, he is standing approximately two inches from my face. So, not only do I have no choice but to give him a cigarette, I am terrified that he’s going to reach into my bag and steal my iPhone – or, I guess, my wallet. (As an aside, living in Milan for three months has taught me that giving people cigarettes is no big deal. They all do it on the continent, so I am always particularly generous with cigarettes, hoping that karma will pay it forward in some way – not with lung cancer, though.)

“You’re really beautiful, you know that?” I don’t know that, no. I shuffle a little, look up and down the street, smile. He’s still standing very close, although now he’s smoking, each puff interrupted by a violent coughing fit which suggests to me that he doesn’t actually smoke. “You’re really sexy. I can tell you’re a really sexual person.” I almost laugh, but for the fear.

“You’re making me a little uncomfortable,” I say, and smile, in what I’d imagine is a pained fashion.

“Oh, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” So what do you want? My firstborn? You can have it, just please, step away from me or, better yet, go away. “Would you like to go to lunch?” I don’t even know how to respond. Firstly, because it’s 7.30pm, and secondly, because I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me, and now I suspect that he wants to get me into his house for lunch so that he can sex me up, because I am obviously so sexual a person.

“Um, no, thank you.”

Now it’s his turn to laugh, a big, raucous chortle. “Well, not now!” he says, in the tone of voice that really means, “you crazy woman”. Now I’m the crazy one. “Tomorrow!” Ha, ha, ha.

“I’m sorry [really], I’m very busy.”

“You can’t be busy all the time!” Au contraire, my dear friend, yes I can. But I don’t say that. Another pained smile. “You should come over, I live just around the corner.” On a good news scale, this is comparable to the time my dentist told me I grind my teeth and will have to wear a tooth guard at night.

It feels like my taxi will never arrive. He goes to the shop: “I hope you’re still here when I get back.” Unfortunately, I am, having not even the presence of mind to scurry off inside. I am then the terrified recipient of three (THREE!) very wet kisses on my cheeks (”this is how we do it in Paris”), and he says he hopes we meet again. He pretends to shake my hand but really just holds mine in his warm, clammy paw for about 10 excruciating seconds.

So now he knows where I live, and is convinced I am a sex maniac. What’s a girl to do?!

Yesterday was a good day, on the scale of this week. I went to Dundrum Town Centre, I bought three pairs of shoes (two in Penneys, which I know is not the best thing in the world), I went to Avoca (twice). Then I went to the Court, in Naas, for a night of drinking and dancing.

The Court, for the uninitiated, is a little like Copper’s, with an odder age demographic. I spied a man, in his sixties, run across in front of me on the dancefloor at one stage. I say that as if he was a little mouse because, in my six-inch heels, he seemed tiny. I may be doing him a disservice, because he was so wildly small that I’d say he’s pretty short in real life and I’m really acting like he was only small because I am tall when, in fact, he gets to claim his smallness all day, every day.

I went to cheer up, and to cheer up a friend, and to meet another friend’s new fella who she keeps insisting is not her fella. I didn’t actually meet him, and neither of us ended up cheered up, so it was an epic fail on the “goals achieved” front. But it was entertaining. We drank woo-hoos (no joke; some combination of vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice that I’m sure worked wonders on my kidneys but gave me a woeful headache) and danced to Lady Gaga who I used to hate and now kind of appreciate for not being like everyone else, even if she’s churning out the same cookie-cutter pop bullshit.

I got chatted up by a man who asked if my tattoo (on the inside of my wrist) was a club stamp – yeah, dude, like I haven’t heard that one before, and someone else asked if my hair was a natural colour. (Is it just me, or have we lost any ability to talk to people except to make comments on their appearance?! Whatever happened to the good old “do you come here often?”) Re: my hair – it is currently flame red, like letterbox red, and I doubt that there is anywhere in the world (although maybe on Pandora, sigh) where that could be considered natural-looking.

At 2am we tottered out to a taxi and I tried not to puke for the 15-minute car journey home. In hindsight, it would have been great if I had (although not for the taxi man) because today could possibly have been more productive. I have no photographs of my outfit, but I am going to do a major blog crossover with the fashion blog and show you the cheap shoes I got. Classy.

Oh and if you want to read something really funny, go here and click on every link.

Totally nicked from K8 the GR8

One of my favourite moments in Glee (which just so happens to be the best TV programme going right now) is when Rachel tells the chastity club that they’re living a lie, and that women actually want to have sex just as much as men do, thus shattering the illusions of men (and women, to a certain extent) everywhere. We spend years of our adolescent lives told to resist the advances of those filthy, filthy men who will, at every opportunity, attempt to drop the paw and rob us of that fallacy of patriarchy, our “virginity”.

But the fact of the matter is, sex is a physical urge experienced by both sexes – shock, horror – and not something that we give or receive, but something that we share. (I realise, at this juncture, that sex is also something that can be taken, but that’s not the sex I’m talking about here; that’s not sex, that’s violence.)

Today, I was listening to Spin 103.8. I know, I know, but I was in the car, and tired and a little grumpy and wanted to listen to some Ke$ha or Owl City so I could sing along and forget about the fact that I still can’t find a house, and a lot of other stuff is going wrong, or at least going badly. And they were talking. I hate when they talk on Spin 103.8, firstly because a lot of them went to the Rachel Allen school of enunciation, and secondly because they put. Full stops. Between. The oddest. Words! Thirdly, every sentence ends in an exclamation mark! And they have the most inane topics up for discussion.

Today’s treat was: how long is too long to wait for your woman before she will finally relieve your suffering and give it up! How very progressive of them. Heaven forbid they should discuss something that is relevant or interesting or in some way constructive. But I digress.

So, Trevor was on the phone. “Trevor, you waited a year before sleeping with your girlfriend!” Trevor DID wait a year. Because he had decided he wanted to wait until he loved a girl before sleeping with her, explaining this desire with the phrase “I’m a Catholic”, although I’d wager he misunderstands the rules of Catholicism just a tad. Trevor’s girlfriend also wanted to wait; he was her “first” boyfriend (and first something else, was the inferred point, although of course we’re not grown-up enough to talk about that). Not only did he wait for a WHOLE YEAR to sleep with his girlfriend, poor Trevor was incapable of using the word “sex” and instead referred to “doing it”, over and over again.

At one point, poor Trevor did say “making love” but it was in the context of why he waited until he was in love: “It’s called ‘making love’ for a reason,” says Trev. Ah Trev, I’d wager it’s called “making love” for the purposes of Mills & Boon and the fact that people are too guilted by years of Catholic teaching to use the word “sex”.

Then the (male!) presenter started to talk about how difficult it must be, “as a man” (heaven preserve me), to wait for your girlfriend to finally decide to give in to your MASCULINE URGES and just DO IT. At no point was there any mention of the fact that women have urges too – women do, quite often, in my experience, want to have sex, regardless of whether or not they’re in love, regardless of whether or not they’re Catholic. . .

But here’s the rub. If your girlfriend doesn’t want to have sex with you and it’s not because she’s repulsed by your very being, leave her at it. It’s about respect. If my other half didn’t want to watch America’s Next Top Model, I wouldn’t make him, even if it would fulfill my EVERY urge. And if you spend more than two minutes pushing your girlfriend to have sex, I hope she never, ever has sex with you, and your penis falls off, or whatever lies they’re telling boys these days.

Rant over. Normal programming will resume soon, but I have a lot going on and for now sporadic, badly-phrased posts about things that are driving me insane will have to suffice. Read about fashion over here though, it’s like, totally great.

A ha ha. I’ve never been so amused. I’m talking about serious fashion stuff over on Fash Mob, but right here I’m talking about how cute this thing is in its jumper (what is it? is it a dog? is it a plane?!!):

Via Cute Overload

Since I started over at the new fashion blog, I’ve found it hard to keep everything going, and am not quite sure yet what function rosemarymaccabe.com is going to have in the coming weeks and months. I can keep doing my style posts, but I’ve been quite rubbish at that too, so I’m not sure. . . I shall think on it. In the meantime:

I have been totally obsessed with the idea of finding a place to live of late. Yesterday evening I went to dinner with a friend and, no sooner had our plates been cleared but I had the Daft.ie app up on my phone, showing her places I thought were okay, or nice, or nicer than nice, or a bit too expensive. . . I need to chill the hell out.

All images above from Ffffound or, perhaps, from interior design heaven.

I always love when other people do these, so I thought I’d give it a go and give you some random information to digest over lunch. . . (I also submitted five facts to Conor Pope’s post a few days back.)

1. I was named after my mother’s sister, who died during the second World War. She was coeliac but nobody knew what was wrong with her, only that she kept getting sick and nothing she ate seemed to agree with her except bananas, which they couldn’t get in Ireland at the time.

2. At one point, I had 13 body piercings (none of them in rude places). Now, I have about six, most of which are in my ears, but I’d like to get a few more if I wasn’t a *little* concerned about my professional persona.

3. I cry really easily. I frequently cry at movie trailers, and I always cry if something hits me in the face, even something light like a paper plane. I don’t know why, it’s like a very extreme (and embarrassing) reaction to the shock of it.

4. I’m a libertarian of sorts; I believe in equal and full rights for all, only to be curtailed by punishments for infringing on other people’s rights. I’d love to be more political but I find myself feeling only apathy when faced with the Irish system.

5. I am pretty impatient. Yesterday I almost threw my tripod against a wall for not “behaving”. I was *this* close to stomping my feet.

6. When I was about seven, I broke my arm, but it was so high up near my shoulder that I couldn’t wear a cast. No one in school believed I’d broken it because I didn’t have it in plaster.

7. Our relatives refer to our house as the Bates Motel for animals – once they check in, they don’t come out. We’ve had about 11 dogs, 17 cats, two hamsters, a budgie and a leverett (baby hare, oddly). We don’t do anything to them, per se, but there seem to be a lot of booby traps lying in wait to catch them out. Our current cat might be the longest survivor, at about seven years, even though I suspect the ma would do just about anything to get rid of her.

8. I really like living in Ireland. I love travelling, but I always love coming home again, no matter how grey or rainy or generally crap the country is at the time.

9. I love karaoke and can recognise 90% of songs within the first couple of bars. I also learn lyrics really quickly; two listens and I’ll usually have it down. It’s less useful than you’d imagine.

10. I’m pretty good at archery. I’ve spent my whole life trying to find a sport I’m good at, and while I’m not sure how sporty I consider archery, I’ll take it, if there’s no other option.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Ke$ha lately, my problems with the dollar sign notwithstanding, and it was to her hip-hop-pop soundtrack that I dressed myself on this fine, cold morning. Having been skiing for a week, I was determined to keep up the exercise ante so I went for a brisk walk in the fffffffreeezing cold, then returned determined to wrap up relatively warmly (ahem, fail on that count) and to debut my new Alexander Wang booties.

I could have gone down the jeans ‘n’ studs route, but I figured a bit of colour would be nice to offset the toughness of the boots themselves – and the black of the tights and the cardigan was kind of enough on the auld toughometer. The belt was a gift from the folks over at Isabella Oliver and I’ve been dying to mix it up with some other colours to do something different, rather than the old tried ‘n’ trusted plain dress, coloured belt business, and I was happier with the result than I am with the photographs! I had some tripod troubles. . . (more…)